6 Reasons Why Social Media Works for B2B Marketing

In today’s modern world, we’re all connected by screens. Whether you’re using a phone, tablet or laptop, it’s easier than ever to see what someone is doing halfway across the world (and see what they had for breakfast for that matter). You can thank social media for that.

Marketers and business executives often forget that social media can be used as a lead generation super tool. That’s right; it isn’t just gossip or GIFs anymore! Here are six crucial reasons why you should start using social media for marketing.

1. Social Media Helps Inbound Marketing Efforts

Your inbound efforts are all centered around ensuring you have a strong website with solid content. Your website is a great platform to grab lead information and keep track of them during the buyer's journey, but it’s only the first step in ensuring traffic is coming across your content. That’s where social media can help.

Social media is a great tool to help viewers come across your website content like blogs, bottom-of-the-funnel offers or even case studies. It’s important to remember to not only continually post your most up-to-date company information, employee spotlight and products, but the content that you’re creating as well.

Developing a social media plan is a great way to leverage blogs, videos and infographics your team has created. Once you have posted this content, it’s imperative to include links back to your website. Linking your content back to your website will increase the chances of the reader exploring your website.

2. You Can Reach Specific Personas on Each Platform

Each of your target personas may have different needs and goals on their social platforms of choice. Researching your personas will help to give you an idea of what platform your persona utilizes the most.

For example, if they’re most likely to use Facebook daily, it’s important to post 3-4 times per week to guarantee your content is put in front of them. Creating various types of content for the platform is more engaging for the viewer as well. Types of content you can leverage across social media platforms are:

• Infographics
• Video
• Carousel posts
• GIFs
• Memes
• Blogs

3. It’s Cost Effective!

Marketing efforts can often be expensive and budget-consuming. However, using social media for marketing is an extremely cost-effective strategy to work into your everyday strategy. Unless you’re using paid ads or boosting posts, social media is free to use! Creating accounts for your brand on all platforms will ensure your audience can reach you anytime, anywhere. The more you make yourself visible across all platforms, the greater chance you have of staying present with your current audience as well as growing it.

4. Increase Your Brand Loyalty

How people view your brand is everything, especially in such a brand-driven world. Ensuring your brand is consistent across all social media platforms strengthens your brand recognition. Using the same logo, colors and similar messaging will help your audience understand your brand and align with your goals and social media plan.

People want to interact and buy from brands they can trust. Posting content that is valuable to your personas, hits their pain points and answers their questions strengthens your brand identity and instills trust in viewers.

When creating content, it’s also important to include your brand personality and messaging. People want to interact with brands that are humanized and that understand them.

“90% of consumers are more likely to engage with posts that embrace the company’s personality.” — Sprout Social

5. See Your ROI in Action

Tracking your success on social media is extremely easy and streamlined! It’s very obvious to tell if your audience is not resonating with your social media message. If they aren't liking, sharing or commenting on your posts, your content most likely is not relatable or hitting their pain point. According to HubSpot, “The top three ways marketers measure ROI of social media marketing is engagement, traffic, and leads.”

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all have data and analytic hubs built into the platform that allows you to go in and review your data, build reports and give insights on what type of content is working.

6. Interact With Your Customers

Consumers love to post about products they have bought and share their thoughts and opinions with the online community. Social media is a great way to listen in and see what people have to say about you—the good and the bad. Interacting with customers on social media shows them that you care about what they have to say.

It’s important to not only acknowledge feedback but also provide a solution. Replying directly to customers will instill trust in your brand and create brand loyalty.

Using social media for marketing is the super tool we have been missing out on. Optimizing your content for each platform will ensure the best experience for your audience as well as increasing the chances for them to interact with your content.

What are you waiting for? It's time to get posting!